In the Termit region of eastern Niger, its ancient inhabitants are now thought to have become the first iron smelting people in West Africa and among the first in the world at around 1500 BC. Iron and copper working then continued to spread southward to Nigeria, and then moved elsewhere in the continent, reaching South Africa around AD 200. The widespread use of iron revolutionized the Bantu-speaking farming communities who adopted it, driving out and absorbing the rock tool using hunter-gatherer societies they encountered as they expanded to farm wider areas of savannah. The technologically superior Bantu-speakers spread across southern Africa and became wealthy and powerful, producing iron for tools and weapons in large, industrial quantities. |
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